


Our July

by UnwrittenCurse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heartbreak, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 12:13:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6469645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnwrittenCurse/pseuds/UnwrittenCurse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We have our good days. There are days when he slips into bed and I wake to his comforting smell, and when I wrap myself around him his body responds by reaching for me in return. There are days when I need him. </p><p>But some mornings I wake up and I can’t remember the last time he touched me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our July

**Author's Note:**

> Prequel to Connect the Dots

**July 2004**

With the rush of blood, my womb contracts—perhaps in protection or perhaps in expulsion. I can feel my body at sudden, unexpected war.

I’m at home (thankfully), hunched over the bed, with Crookshanks circling my ankles in imperfect infinity eights. His hair stands at attention, his tail a marshmallow puff of electricity. I cling to this detail as the contraction pulls at my middle and Crookshanks lets out a piercing yelp.

Somehow, I make it to the bathroom, palming the wall as I hobble into the relief of white tile. I make it to the tub before the explosion of red. The bath is a battlefield and I am covered in murder.

Between the shattering pains, I sponge myself off in circles. My fingers shake; I ignore them.

I dry off and dress myself in a clean pair of sweatpants from the laundry pile and one of Ron’s old t-shirts, which smells vaguely of him and vaguely of disuse. I _Scourgify_ my soiled clothes and fold them carefully. The routine keeps the panic at bay.

Next, St. Mungo’s. The pressure of flooing comforts me—it holds me together, keeps what is in, in.

The Healers alert Ron and he arrives in minutes, pink-faced and breathy. He clings to my shoulders but does not—perhaps cannot—speak. Thankfully, we are joined shortly by a Healer who asks a lot of questions but gives few answers and little comfort. His short fingers _tap, tap, tap_ on his clipboard as Ron holds me and as I sob quietly into my cupped hands.

Tests are run and the diagnosis stings like a numbing agent. It takes root somewhere behind my ribcage and spreads out like veins of ice, fragile and ready to crack.

_Miscarriage_

I had known since the first wave of pain hit, but saying goodbye to the possibility of motherhood isn’t something that happens in an instant. It’s something that happens gradually, like spider webs or pillars of salt—string by string and grain by grain. 

It’s like holding water in your cupped hands.

We’re given a potion to “help things along” and another potion to manage the pain. Ron holds the bottles at arms’ length. He won’t look at them.

He won’t look at me.

That night, I lie in bed under the light of a crescent moon. It bleeds onto the bedsheets, catching me in a grimace of pain, my arms looped around my middle in a gesture of mourning for the tiny life that is lost, as it has taken something from me in its leaving.

I’m alone save the hairy lump of cat at my feet. Crookshanks snores peacefully and a smile flickers across my face before the tears catch in my throat. They have caught me in a moment of joy, and I feel guilty and sad and broken all in one, overwhelming moment.

I reach for Ron but his side of the bed is cold. I remember, then, that he’s in the kitchen pouring over work. He’s probably left his shoes on and the image somehow makes me cry harder, the sobs coming from an empty pit in my chest that aches and aches, though lesser and lesser as the tears fall onto my pillow in little, shining globes.

I pull the sheets up to my chin. The night is warm and humid, but a coldness has settled into my skin. It’s a coldness that remains until Ron finds his way upstairs at half past two in the morning.

By then, I’ve already cried all that I can cry.

 

**September 2004**

“Deputy Head?” Ron looks up from the _Prophet_ and smiles. “Does that mean a bigger flat?”

I survey the cramped living room which barely accommodates Ron’s armchair and the old sofa my parents generously bestowed. Despite my affection for this flat—being that it is our first home as man and wife—I don’t fight the excitement that builds at the thought of this promotion funding a new home, a home big enough for growth.

“Not yet,” I reply. “But soon.”

Ron tosses the paper aside and stands to lift me in his capable arms, spinning me around once, then twice as I laugh in dizzying glee.

“I knew you’d get it,” Ron says as he puts me down. He kisses me sloppily on the cheek. “Shacklebolt would’ve been an idiot not to hire you.”

“There were other qualified candidates, honey,” I assure him, brushing cat hair from the front of his shirt. “It was never a sure thing.”

“Of course it was! You’re Hermione Granger! You can do no wrong!”

Though his eyes smile, I sense a more sinister motive slumbering beneath the surface. It’s subtle—a curl of the lip, a flare of the nostril—and perhaps subconscious. But it’s there. And my news is soured.

“Let’s grab a bite,” Ron continues. “Your favorite restaurant.”

I wave him off, heading towards the kitchen to start on the dishes. “It’s really not necessary.”

Ron follows me. “Hermione,” he says sternly.

“I’ve got plenty to do tonight anyway.” I’m almost at the sink now. I roll up my sleeves.

“I want to celebrate with my wife,” Ron persists, catching me from behind and nipping at my ear. I lose my breath and fall into him. The dishes jeer at me from the sink.

“We don’t have to go out,” he says. “We can stay in instead.” And he turns me around in his arms until we’re face to face. I peer up at him curiously and see that the sinister in his expression has become more pronounced. But it’s a sinister that sets me burning. It’s a sinister that has him chasing me into the bedroom, pulling off socks and pants and shirts so that when our bodies hit the bed, there’s nothing between us and the sheets.

 

**December 2004**

The presents sit beneath the Christmas tree, the stockings hang heavy on the mantel, and sleep refuses to visit me. I gaze listlessly out the window of Ron’s childhood bedroom, watching the snow fall like confetti on the grounds of the Burrow.

Behind me, Ron snores from the too-small bed and I imagine his chest rising and falling with sleep-breaths though I can’t see him through the darkness. Creaks and wails whisper occasionally overhead—either the house settling or the ghoul turning in his sleep. I think of the other dozen occupants of the Burrow tucked away in their dreams, eager for Christmas morning to peek over the horizon in just three short hours.

And here I sit. Awake though desperately seeking sleep.

I can’t help the thoughts that taunt me, the thoughts of a little boy or girl snuggled inside the thick walls of my womb. I’d be eight months pregnant now, if we hadn’t been forced to say goodbye.

I both dread and anticipate the coming morning, and seeing the delight of my nieces and nephews as they experience Christmas anew. I expect their joy, their childlike wonder, will both heal and provoke; my love for them doesn’t quite equal the ache of childlessness.

Dwelling is painful, so I make my way down five flights of stairs, eager to brew a cup of tea as a distraction. The house seems to move with me, swaying as I amble down hallways and fumble with doorknobs.

When I reach the kitchen, the lights are on. I am immediately alerted to another’s presence. 

“Molly?” I ask, my voice hoarse from crying.

From her position at the kitchen table, Molly turns to look at me. Her face brightens. She beckons me over.

“It’s good to have company,” she says, pulling me into her side for a one-armed hug. 

I sit down beside her.

“Can’t sleep?” I ask. 

Molly shakes her head. I can see her fighting some inner demon—there is wetness at the corners of her eyes and a sallow tinge to her cheeks. Nevertheless, she smiles and offers me tea. I accept graciously and watch her patter to the kettle and tap it with her wand.

I admire Molly for her willingness to be forthcoming. Tonight is no different.

“Christmas is hard,” she says. “It’s a time for family so of course I’m left thinking of—of…”

“Fred,” I supply. She nods.

“Little Freddy is so much like his uncle. And I love him so, but he’s not my Fred.” Molly twists her fingers around the knitting of her jumper, then turns back to the kettle. It spits steam intermittently as it heats, and Molly bangs about in the cupboards looking for a clean mug.

“Oh, the mess,” she says. I get the sense that she talks to keep herself from crying. “I wouldn’t change it. I’m used to the mess, you see. Having a full house means it’s always a mess, and you learn to make peace with that.”

She laughs. So do I.

“It’s good to have company,” she echoes.

The kettle whistles and Molly makes quick work of pouring me a nightcap. All the while, her back is to me. I watch her busy herself with sugar and honey, her movements slow but deliberate.

When she turns around, I see that she is crying.

“Molly,” I exhale, standing from the table and joining my mother-in-law at the counter. I take the mug from her and set it down. She lets me. 

“You’re a good girl, Hermione,” she says through her tears. She nestles her hand against my elbow. “You’re a good girl.”

Just then, there is a rustling sound in the hall. We both turn and see Arthur, sleep-drunk and shuffling in his house shoes, entering the kitchen. He yawns almost comically, then says, “Molly dearest, I thought I’d find you here.”

I turn to Molly and see the tightness in her jawline melt away. I see her take a long inhale, then run to Arthur and throw herself in his arms. He stumbles backwards but catches himself.

“Dearest,” he cooes, petting her head sleepily.

Molly clings to Arthur and their embrace seems to be a ritual of remembering Fred, a shared grief that keeps these two planets in close orbit. I look away, feeling like a voyeur. As the house shifts, adjusting to Arthur’s arrival in the kitchen, I know it’s time for me to head back to Ron and our shared room. So with careful hands, I cradle my mug of tea and quietly make my way to the stairs. Arthur doesn’t notice, but Molly does. She smiles at me as I pass.

Her acknowledgment makes me want to cry all over again, and I do, but not until I make it to the attic room and find Ron snoring in the too-small bed, right where I left him. His side of the bed feels like the dark side of the moon.

 

**February 2005**

I try to remember how it felt the first time. I was nervous, probably. I remember my fingers shaking as I held the test up to the light to ensure that there were, in fact, two pink lines. I was relieved, probably. We’d gotten lucky our first month, a blessing which would save us the agony of waiting and wondering if everything _worked_. And I was happy, probably. I imagined the little life swelling inside of me, imagined what it might be like when it came time to hold it in our arms.

That’s probably what it had been like.

This time, though, it’s different. This time all I feel is terror.

Because I could lose it all over again. 

I don’t say anything to Ron when he comes home from work. I hold the secret inside of me like some kind of criminal and I can’t fathom how Ron doesn’t feel the guilt radiating from my body as he curls against it in sleep.

A week passes. Ron and I intersect on our ways to work, but our interactions are short, sporadic. He comes home tired and I don’t mention it and we dance this dance until I feel the secret blistering and the only salve is to say, out loud,

“I’m pregnant.”

We lie side by side in the dark. It’s been another day and night of passing conversations, of flight patterns that don’t quite cross, and the house feels clinical. In the face of guilt and terror, I have spent much of the past week cleaning.

Ron stirs. He loops an arm around my stomach and pulls me into his chest. I can feel him smiling in the darkness. I feel it in the pull of his muscles as he clings to me, burrowing his face against my neck.

“I love you,” he says. “I love you so much.”

“I’m scared,” I whisper.

He presses a kiss against my shoulder blade. “Don’t be,” he says. “Everything is going to be perfect this time.”

I can’t understand why, but his hope stirs up remnants of grief. 

“How do you know?” I say.

He nuzzles against my neck again. His scruff tickles my skin.

“I just do.” 

And his mouth is warm as he speaks the words into my hair, so I turn and I kiss him, claiming some of his warmth as my own. I want to store it inside of me. I want it to make this thing real.

None of this feels real.

 

**April 2005**

The flat is constantly one step ahead of me.

I sweep up while the dishes pile in the sink. I fold laundry while Crookshanks flips the garbage can on its side. I file a month’s worth of mail while Ron brings home a stack of reports that clutter the kitchen.

Today, as the nausea rolls in my stomach and forces me onto the couch, I feel like setting the whole place aflame and cursing its name as it burns. But instead I inhale and exhale in slow, patterned breaths and concentrate on keeping my lunch.

A cool breeze sneaks in through an open window. It ruffles my fringe and cools my clammy cheeks. I snake my fingers through my hair and pull it into a bun, letting the evening air kiss my face as I contemplate turning in early and letting Ron face the rest of the mess.

But then I hear a disturbance and I shoot up, entering the kitchen on wobbly legs to find Ron removing his jacket with an audible sigh.

“You’re home early,” I say.

He moves to kiss me on the forehead and groans. “Awful day,” he says as he removes his jacket. “New trainee. Muddled through Concealment Charms today. Nearly burned the office down.”

I resist laughing at his sorry state and instead graciously accept his jacket as he collapses into a kitchen chair.

“Have some empathy, Ronald,” I say, tucking his jacket away in the hall closet. “You remember all the nights you’d come home with scrapes and bruises and burns from Auror training? It’s meant to be difficult. You’re hunting Dark wizards and we both know they don’t play fair.” I join him at the table, then, easing myself into a seat as the nausea cloys again at my stomach.

Ron shrugs. He sinks further into the chair, leans his head back, and closes his eyes. For a moment, I do the same, taking solace in the conversation of our breaths. It keeps me grounded.

Then, I say, “Let’s turn in early. Tomorrow we can tackle the rest of the cleaning.”

Without moving a muscle—not even to open an eye—he says, “I don't have time tomorrow. Sorry. Too busy with work.”

“I work too, Ronald,” I remind him. “The least you can do is help me for ten minutes.”

Ron’s eyes are open now, wide open, as he considers me. 

“Of course,” he says, “You’re the Deputy Head now. You’re far busier than the rest of us.”

He doesn’t raise his tone. He doesn’t flick his tongue in sarcasm. The words drag along in monotone and scrape against the affection I felt upon seeing him home, seeing him frustrated and needing me.

“I’m going to bed,” I say, standing quickly. “You’re angry and you’re taking it out on me and I’m going to bed before this becomes—”

“No.” He’s standing now, too. The legs of his chair scrape against the hardwood as he moves to block my path. His cheeks are pink and, now that he’s close enough to breathe in, I catch the harsh tug of sweat on his skin. My stomach churns, but Ron doesn’t relent. “I’m not angry,” he continues. “I’m not _good enough_.”

“Ron,” I breathe.

“It’s always something. I didn’t take out the trash or I forgot to mail a letter or I came home five minutes late. All the while you—well, you never make a mistake, do you?”

“Ron,” I echo.

Ron sighs and looks away. He doesn’t get angry with me—not anymore. Or, rather, he doesn’t put in the effort of getting angry, doesn’t bother to yell and scream and stomp about the house. He just stands there and speaks in a monotone that sounds like all the air has leaked out of him. Like all the air has leaked out of our marriage.

I’d rather he yelled.

Instead, he gives up. He turns around and walks away and I watch him vanish into the darkness of our bedroom before I wilt, folding into myself and landing on the cool kitchen floor, breathing my slow, patterned breaths and pressing my palms against the gentle curve of my stomach.

As I sit there, cradling the life that’s inside me, I realize that part of me has given up, too.

 

**June 2005**

Most nights, I’m in bed before Ron gets home. Pregnancy changes my relationship with my body—its patterns and its needs and the ways it moves around in the world—and so I find myself in bed earlier and earlier, my stomach swelling as the days pass and as my interactions with Ron grow thinner.

We have our good days. There are days when he slips into bed and I wake to his comforting smell, and when I wrap myself around him his body responds by reaching for me in return. There are days when I need him. 

But some mornings I wake up and I can’t remember the last time he touched me.

Today is one of those days. I return from work with Kingsley, feeling rubbed raw by the case we’ve chipped and chipped away at—a business scholarship that favors the pureblooded graduates of Slytherin house—and immediately slip out of my work clothes and into the bath. I lazily brandish my wand to light a pair of candles on the counter. Crookshanks watches them flicker but doesn’t pounce. He’s learned his lesson before.

As I soak in the bath, I try not to think of Ron. But he’s there in between the thoughts I think instead of him and he’s there in the gentle whoosh of water around the mountain of my stomach.

When I feel like a sufficiently sun-dried raisin, I drain the bath and step into a clean robe. It smells of lavender. Crookshanks paws at the ends of the tie wrapped around my waist and I snatch him into my arms with a gentle, “Silly cat.”

That’s when I hear Harry calling for me.

“Hermione? You home?”

I flick on the light in the hall. “I’m here,” I respond. “Give me a minute.”

I set Crookshanks down and shoo him into the bedroom where I slip into a pair of exercise pants and a tank top. Harry waits patiently, flipping through an edition of _Quidditch Weekly_ as I join him in the living room.

When I enter the room, his gaze jerks upward. His eyes are sad, apologetic. 

I feel suddenly breathless.

“Hermione, how are you?” he asks, gesturing for me to sit beside him. I do, attempting a smile.

“Fine,” I reply. “How’s James?”

“He’s quite the talker,” Harry laughs. “Not that anything he says is coherent, but…” He pauses. Crookshanks jumps onto his lap and starts purring, though Harry looks only at me. “I actually came to ask you something. About Ron.”

The name hits me like a tidal wave, cresting and then rolling away into a dizzying stillness. I hope Harry doesn’t notice.

“Yes?” I say.

“Has he mentioned our trainee?”

I nod. “Just the once, but yes, he did. Seemed frustrated with him.”

“ _Her_ ,” Harry corrects. I look away.

“Oh. Well, _her_ , then.”

Harry scoots closer. I feel his pity growing like a stubborn hangnail that I can’t quite tear. But oh, how I want to rip it out, to be done with it.

“Spit it out, then,” I say, more angrily than I intended. “He’s cheating, isn’t he?”

“Not quite.” Harry bites his lip. 

“Not quite?”

Crookshanks has given up on Harry, so he pads his way to my lap. I feel his warmth settle against my legs. He purrs languidly.

“Ron’s been going to the pub with her after work almost every night. He’s told me it’s to discuss training, but I know they’ve been there until long after midnight some days and I—”

“Stop.” I can barely get the word out.

Harry nods. “I’m sorry, Hermione. I thought you’d want to know.”

Now I nod, though it feels mechanic. My fingers stretch instinctively against my taut stomach, brushing against Crookshanks’ fur. He stretches, then yawns, his pink mouth stretching open to reveal tiny, yellowing teeth. My affection for him in that moment swells inside of me and I start to suddenly, wildly weep.

Next thing I know, Harry is holding me. His arms gather around me and Crookshanks, frightened, leaps to the floor and skitters away. I miss him instantly, but I can’t move or speak. 

I feel as though I’m drowning.

 

**July 2005**

I’ve replayed our conversation in my mind countless times. First, the yelling—my yelling—then the crying—also mine. Ron assuring me that nothing happened, _nothing at all_ , just friendly chatter and _yes_ , maybe he did it to avoid coming home to such a sterile environment, but _no_ he wasn’t cheating so _why with her?_

“I don’t know.”

I push and I prod, but all Ron comes up with, after five years of marriage and a baby on the way, is “I don’t know.”

And as soon as he says it, I know I'm done.

It's not even the image of him clinking glasses with her, smiling at her, his eyes all over her face and her skin—it's that he couldn’t put in the effort to even invent an excuse, to say, “Hermione, it was stupid and I was just helping her feel like she fit in with us, you know?” I would’ve rolled my eyes and we would’ve fought, but nothing sacred in me would’ve snapped like it has now.

I think of our conversation even now, as I throw my belongings into a series of boxes piled along the bedroom wall. I think of the defeat that hung in the room like an uninvited ghost.

Then I double- and triple-check that I have everything before sealing the boxes and levitating them into the living room where I grab Crookshanks and slip on my shoes and, without giving myself time to dwell or to cry, I step into the green flames and I am gone.


End file.
